Day 24-29: Recap of a week with family
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
With some Forest Gump style luck, two weeks before my dads trip he ran into a Cameron University tennis player who is from Argentina. As luck would have it, this guy had a 20 year old brother living in Buenos Aires who was currently out of school for summer break. After a phone call and some emails, my dad had a personal family tour guide for this past week.
As I told in a previous post, my family traveled up to Iquazu Falls for a quick 2 day trip out of town.
They returned on Wednesday and we resumed our Buenos Aires tour. First we visited the famous Recoleta Cemetery. It is very small compared to others in the city but a tourist attraction because it contains the tombs of some of Argentina's most important people such as Evita and several past presidents. We then took a public bus over to Puerto Madero and saw the iconic Puente de la Mujer bridge (shown below). Afterward we stopped by the courtyard directly in front of their main government office (the Casa Rosada - literally "Pink House"), called Plaza de Mayo, which is famous for a weekly protest that's been going on for over 33 years. Every Thursday, the mothers and grandmothers of those that disappeared during the "Dirty War" walked originally to push the government to investigate the crimes of the past and now as a reminder of the atrocities of a former time. News articles are still written about DNA tests of people in their 30's that were "adopted/given" secretly to family's with money and power
Thursday, we hung out with some gauchos at an "authentic" tourist ranch as part of a tour about an hour outside of the city. We rode some horses and watched the gauchos demonstrate some of their horsemanship skills. Lunch was a ridiculous amount of food that required two plates. The first was for salad, potatoes, chicken and sausage (chorizo and blood sausage). The second was for beef only; steak and ribs. After which, they topped us of with a customary serving of Dulce de Leche (similar to caramel) ice cream. They love Dulce de Leche so much that it's a common flavor for everything (ie crackers, pastries, Oreos, etc).
Friday (Feb 4th) was Brian's 40st birthday and also the day we went over to Uruguay. Buenos Aires is located directly across a 30 mile wide river from Colonia, Uruguay. I'd consider this body of water to be the ocean, but they say its the world's largest river. To cross the river, we took a very modern ferry which held around 600-1000 people. Colonia was a former Portuguese colony and a current world heritage site because of the age of its buildings. We found a nice sandy beach and proceeded to see how much we could burn this week.
On Saturday, we took the group to Abasto Shopping, one of the local malls for lunch. This mall is a lot more middle class then a previous mall we had walked through (you can read that as "doesn't include a Tiffany's"). After the mall, we took a subway ride to the National Cemetery, Cementerio de la Chacarita, which is the largest cemetery in Argentina and was created in 1871 after a yellow fever epidemic. In additional to the expensive mausoleum tombs and traditional burial plots, inside the cemetery walls contained 3 floors of smaller tombs (2x2" squares for a single casket) stacked 10 high.
We then went back to the mall for dinner and watched The Green Hornet at the movie theater. The theater was interesting because 75% of their movies were from the US, which meant they were in English with Spanish subtitles (only cartoons and childrens movies get dubbed). Since you're assigned seats when you purchased your tickets, not many people actually sit in the theater until the previews have started.
Last night was the Superbowl, so we did what any sensible American would do and searched out a bar owned by some Yankees (which is what the Spanish world calls anyone and everyone from America). The bar/restaurant we found was standing room only, but we lucked out and found a back room with its own TV. Downside was our TV had no sound. The audio in the next room was loud enough for us to hear, but it was on another channel and about 5 seconds ahead of our picture. Here's a picture of someone that brought a bag pipe with them. We ordered some smother nachos was made Cool Ranch Doritos instead of regular tortilla chips because they don't really have tortilla chips here.
Their trip ended today as they are now on their flight home. It's been fun having you guys for the week.
As I told in a previous post, my family traveled up to Iquazu Falls for a quick 2 day trip out of town.
They returned on Wednesday and we resumed our Buenos Aires tour. First we visited the famous Recoleta Cemetery. It is very small compared to others in the city but a tourist attraction because it contains the tombs of some of Argentina's most important people such as Evita and several past presidents. We then took a public bus over to Puerto Madero and saw the iconic Puente de la Mujer bridge (shown below). Afterward we stopped by the courtyard directly in front of their main government office (the Casa Rosada - literally "Pink House"), called Plaza de Mayo, which is famous for a weekly protest that's been going on for over 33 years. Every Thursday, the mothers and grandmothers of those that disappeared during the "Dirty War" walked originally to push the government to investigate the crimes of the past and now as a reminder of the atrocities of a former time. News articles are still written about DNA tests of people in their 30's that were "adopted/given" secretly to family's with money and power
Thursday, we hung out with some gauchos at an "authentic" tourist ranch as part of a tour about an hour outside of the city. We rode some horses and watched the gauchos demonstrate some of their horsemanship skills. Lunch was a ridiculous amount of food that required two plates. The first was for salad, potatoes, chicken and sausage (chorizo and blood sausage). The second was for beef only; steak and ribs. After which, they topped us of with a customary serving of Dulce de Leche (similar to caramel) ice cream. They love Dulce de Leche so much that it's a common flavor for everything (ie crackers, pastries, Oreos, etc).
Friday (Feb 4th) was Brian's 40st birthday and also the day we went over to Uruguay. Buenos Aires is located directly across a 30 mile wide river from Colonia, Uruguay. I'd consider this body of water to be the ocean, but they say its the world's largest river. To cross the river, we took a very modern ferry which held around 600-1000 people. Colonia was a former Portuguese colony and a current world heritage site because of the age of its buildings. We found a nice sandy beach and proceeded to see how much we could burn this week.
On Saturday, we took the group to Abasto Shopping, one of the local malls for lunch. This mall is a lot more middle class then a previous mall we had walked through (you can read that as "doesn't include a Tiffany's"). After the mall, we took a subway ride to the National Cemetery, Cementerio de la Chacarita, which is the largest cemetery in Argentina and was created in 1871 after a yellow fever epidemic. In additional to the expensive mausoleum tombs and traditional burial plots, inside the cemetery walls contained 3 floors of smaller tombs (2x2" squares for a single casket) stacked 10 high.
We then went back to the mall for dinner and watched The Green Hornet at the movie theater. The theater was interesting because 75% of their movies were from the US, which meant they were in English with Spanish subtitles (only cartoons and childrens movies get dubbed). Since you're assigned seats when you purchased your tickets, not many people actually sit in the theater until the previews have started.
Last night was the Superbowl, so we did what any sensible American would do and searched out a bar owned by some Yankees (which is what the Spanish world calls anyone and everyone from America). The bar/restaurant we found was standing room only, but we lucked out and found a back room with its own TV. Downside was our TV had no sound. The audio in the next room was loud enough for us to hear, but it was on another channel and about 5 seconds ahead of our picture. Here's a picture of someone that brought a bag pipe with them. We ordered some smother nachos was made Cool Ranch Doritos instead of regular tortilla chips because they don't really have tortilla chips here.
Their trip ended today as they are now on their flight home. It's been fun having you guys for the week.
Tags:
Argentina,
Buenos Aires,
family,
Uruguay
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